.

!NOTES:
See ROBERT COLE'S WORLD, pg. 247.

!NOTES:
Information about Matthew is primarily from his application fo r apension as
a Revolutionary War veteran (SQ pg 179). Nothing is said about his marriage
but we know he had a son John (SQ 582) married to Sarah Brooks.

!NOTES:
Reference to Mary SQ 1389.

Information based primarily on speculation posits that Mary's fullname was Rachel Mary (Sample) Sparks and was obtained on Page 11,478of the IGI (International Genealogical Index) records of Maryland asof March 1992. I received them by mail from an internet contact,Margaret (Mrs. James M .) McCain, 4535 Rota Circle, Fort Worth, TX76133. The printout shows both the marriage and birth informationrelating to Rachel. It is batch/film no 5025806, Sheet 47. (Thisspeculation can be laid to rest as a result of an article in theSPARKS QUARTERLY of December, 2000, Whole No. 188, pp. xx to xxx.)
Under the notes for William Sample Sparks, it discusses his middlename and points out that his first use of it was in 1736. It alsonotes that Joseph's wife was Mary and that a Rachel signed as awitness in the estate of Joseph. The Sparks Association wondered whatwas William's source of the name Sample. It is difficult to assumethat he would have used his uncle's wife's maiden name as his middlename. The article about William speculates that the Rachel whowitnessed Joseph's estate documents may have been William's thirdwife. Could he have married Joseph's widow and, even if so, why washe using the name Sample as early as 1736 when Joseph didn't die until1749?

Margaret McCain is researching the Sample family as her ancestors. AWilliam Sample came from Northern Ireland to America with theAlexander family and settled in Maryland. His wife Esther (Garrison)is mentioned in his will dated January 26, 1769 and proved October1769 in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Witnesses were JosephAlexander, Abigail Alexander and John McCorel. Children named in thewill were John, Joseph, William b. 1736 in Cecil County, MD., and d.in Sep 1791 aged 55, in Mecklenburg. He married Elizabeth Alexander,dau. of James and Abigail (McKnitt) Alexander in 1760; Mary, m.Hezekiah Alexander, son of James and his first wife Margaret McKnitt.They had 11 children. Mary Sample Alexander died May 17 1806 aged 71. Both are buried at Sugar Creek Presbyterian Church in MecklenburgCounty, North Carolina. Esther Sample.
In order to be related to Rachel Sample, William Sr. would have beenher brother. It can be noticed that a granddaughter of Rachel (Jonas)was named Esther, perhaps after Rachel's mother.

.

!CENSUS:
See A COLLECTION OF 1851 CENSUS RECORDS FOR CORK COUNTY, IRELAND by
Josephine Masterson, Clearfield Company., page 80 Family number 437;Pigott, Mary, age 70, head of family, Town, Kilworth, widow. TownlandMonedrisane, Parish, Kilworth, page 47. Pigott, Mary, age 24,daughter (same)

!NOTE:
It is pure speculation that Mary (???) Pigott is the mother of Williamand grandmother of Cornelius Pigott. That conclusion is based solel yon the fact that she is living in the town of Kilworth and is theonly woman of the appropriate age to be William's mother. William was47 in this census. It is to be noted that the younger Mary above wasborn about 1827 when her mother was 46 years of age. William's oldestchild, his son Dennis was born in 1829.
However, it is also to be noted that another William appears on thecensus (page 50) in Kilworth Parish, age 45, who is listed as arelative in the Barrett family (though how is difficult to ascertain). Thus , there may be another Pigott family in the area to which theabove Mary is related. Other Pigotts in the census of the fourparishes in the Kilworth a rea are included in addition to Mary andher daughter Mary as follows (references to page numbers refer to theCensus Collection above referenced):
pg. 14, family no. 180. Edmond Pigott, 40, laborer, Ballinvoher T/ S,Kilworth Parish, pg 16. Margaret 38, Ellen 16, Michael 6.
pg. 54, family no. 362. Margaret Pigott, 29, milliner, Kilworth T/ S,
Kilworth Parish, pg. 36; Johanna, 26, sister.
pg. 61, family no 363 (Norcott). Pigott, Catherine, 26, servant ,Kil-
worth T/S, Kilworth Parish, pg 42.
The names of the single Pigott ladies, including the person who livedwith the elder Mary were Mary, Margaret, Johanna and Catherine. Thelatter three names are identical to the names of all three ofWilliam's daughters . These ladies were probably daughters of abrother of William or, possibly , were his younger sisters. We haveno proof of any relationship at this time. (1995)

.

!NOTES:
See WILLS OF SPENCER COUNTY, KY., Book C, pg 392 for her estate wh ich
was probated after 1842 with son Lewis Stone as her administrator.

.

!NOTES:
Major Henry Rice died Nov 13 1800. He made a bequest to Phebe i n his
last will so she must have survived him.

This is the continuation of notes of William D. Sparks taken from anarticle in THE SPARKS QUARTERLY for June 2001, Whole No. 190,commencing here at page 5384:

"The effort of William D. Sparks to assist his brother to obtainbounty land was not successful.

"We can assume that William reported his age to the County Clerk ofCooper County, Henry C. Levens, who then recorded it as 65 in the 1855application and as 67 in the 1857 affidavit. Because it was a Courtofficial to whom William reported his age and, in turn, swore underoath that the documents were truthful, we believe that he would havemade every effort to be accurate. It is on the basis of thesedocuments that we conclude that William D. Sparks was born in or about1790.

"It was with a steady hand that William signed his affidavit on March27, 1857, but he died some 16 months later, on August 7, 1858,according to the date carved on his gravestone. His age at death,according to the carver of the stone, was "In the 71. Yr." This wouldplace his birth year as about 1788, but just because something hasbeen carved in stone does not make it true.

"We are indebted to Carol Hodge March for the photograph of hisgravestone shown on the following page. Her dramatic account of hersearch for nearly a quarter of a century for the grave site of WilliamD. Sparks, with the hope for the existence of a stone marking thatspot, involves mystery and fascinating detective work by a number ofinterested parties who assisted her, including a local historian ofCooper County, Missouri, named Mrs. Helen Mitzel.

"When Mrs. March first corresponded with Mrs. Mitzel, she (Mrs.Mitzel) was aware of an abandoned cemetery site near the town ofPalestine in Cooper County, Missouri, in Township 47 N., Range 17 W.,Section 18, near where William D. Sparks owned land. Here we give onlythe report on the eventual discovery of the Sparks gravestone manyyears later when Mrs. March received a telephone call from a man inCooper County named Gene Painter. She recalls his words as follows:

"The grave and headstone were located on land now owned by June Ganderof Bunceton, Missouri. This property is about 1+ miles south of our(Painter) farm. A now deceased cousin of Mrs. Mitzel had removed theheadstones about 15 years ago because they were in the middle of anarea he wanted to farm. My father, William Painter, was helping Georgerake hay in a field to the north and saw William D. Sparks's headstonein the ditch. A few days later, he stopped along the road and loadedit up and brought it home. I kept the stone by a honeysuckle bush atmy previous house, and when I built a new home in 1984, took Mr.Sparks with me. I used to sit on my patio and wonder who he was, whathappened to his family, and how he came to be in the area. I knew ofno other people by that name.

"Mrs. March further reports that about three years ago "the gravestoneof William D. Sparks was placed in the Mt. Vernon Cemetery near PilotGrove, Missouri, where it now rests against a large tree trunk." Mrs.Mitzel had told Mrs. March earlier that this "little cemetery is theresting place of her great-grandparents and some of her husband'sancestors too, as well as other pioneers of that area. It seemsfitting that William D. Sparks has joined them!"

"The town of "Old Palestine" near where William D. Sparks was buriedin 1858 is now called Speed, Missouri.

"The three sons of William D. Sparks led interesting lives, an accountof which we plan to give in a future issue of the QUARTERLY. Of histwo daughters, we know little. Here we give an outline of what we knowof these five children with the hope that some of our readers mayrecognize them and provide us with additional information about themand their descendants.

****************

(CONTINUATION OF ARTICLE UNDER WILLIAM SAMPLE SPARKS, SPARKSQUARTERLY, December 1989, No. 148, at page 3493:)

"His route took him to Frederick, Maryland, (then to) Warrenton,Virginia, thence eastward to Amelia Court House, thence southward intoNorth Carolina where he hit the trading path near Granville CourtHouse, thence on to Trading Ford.

"Another route followed the "Upper Pensylvania Road" which is found ona map of 1775, and shows that the route instead of turning eastward inVirginia towards Amelia Court House, continued down through theShenandoah Valley to Winchester, Salem, and into North Carolina whereit stopped just about ten miles above Reedy Creek, a distance of 435miles. Both of these routes were used a great deal by the immigrantscoming into this section.

"The great bulk of the settlers into the Yadkin Valley came via thesetwo routes. It is unique that settlement in this part of NorthCarolina took place much faster than it did in counties to the east ofRowan. Immigration did not come from the eastern seaboard as was truein practically every other county, but from North and South.

"The area in Rowan County where the Sparkses settled was called "TheForks of the "Yadkin River." This area was cut off from Rowan Countyin 1836 to form Davie County. It is at the southern tip of what isnow Davie County that the South Yadkin River flows into the YadkinRiver. The Yadkin above this point is sometimes called the "NorthYadkin." The County seat of Rowan County, Salisbury, is about ninemiles south of this lower tip of Davie County. Whether "The Forks ofthe Yadkin" was the area where the Sparkses planned to settle from thestart, or whether they chose it after their arrival in Rowan County,will probably never be known.

"Robert W. Ramsey in his book entitled Carolina Cradle, Settlement ofthe Northwest Carolina Frontier, 1747-1762 (Chapel Hill: TheUniversity of North Carolina Press, 1964) points out that prior to1752, there were virtually no settlers in the Forks of the Yadkin,where the land was "rockier, more hilly, and less fertile than theland further south." He added:
"It was not until the choice land to the east and south had beenoccupied that settlers sought out homes in the forks of theYadkin. The immigrants to this region were largely of English stock,though there was a substantial number of Germans. Although the landgrants of many are dated much later, a majority of these settlerswere undoubtedly living in the area prior to 1756." (p. 72)

" While the number of settlers in the Forks of the Yadkin was small atthe time of the Sparks family's arrival, there were a few familiespresent. James Carter had gone there from Augusta County, Virginia,in 1747, but by 1753 he had obtained a 305-acre tract where Salisburywas being laid out as Rowan County's seat of justice, and it isthought that he had moved there by 1754. A man named Morgan Bryan hadcome to the Forks of the Yadkin with his family from Virginia in 1747,and two years later, in May 1750, Squire Boone had come fromPennsylvania with his family. Squire Boone's son, Daniel, who wouldbecome Kentucky's most famous pioneer, married Bryan's daughter,Rebecca, in 1755. Others present when the Sparkses arrived includedGeorge Forbush, whom William Sample Sparks and his sons may have knownback in Maryland; in the early 1740s Forbush had lived in the "backparts" of Prince Georges County, Maryland. (These "back parts" ofPrince Georges County became Frederick County in 1748.) Anothersettler already on the scene and who may have been known to WilliamSample Sparks, was Samuel Davis who, likewise, had lived in the "backparts" of Prince Georges County from about 1738 until 1747 when he hadgone to North Carolina. Still another settler in the area was EdwardHughes, originally from Pennsylvania, who had moved from WallingsCreek in the Valley of Virginia to the Forks of the Yadkin in 1748.

"Robert W. Ramsey provides information regarding the above men in thechapter of Carolina Cradle entiled "In the Forks of the Yadkin,1752-1762,11 noting that the land on which they had settled had becomeknown as "the Bryan settlement" by 1752. This was in the upper(northern) part of today's Davie County, and extended over into thesouthern portion of what is now Yadkin County. Ramsey adds: 11 ...the only entrance to the area was the way of the shallow ford, and thecrossing there was controlled by Hughes, Davis, Carter, Forbush, andBryan." (P.73)

"The "shallow ford" was the point where the Great Wagon Road fromPennsylvania and Maryland crossed the Yadkin just below the mouth ofDeep Creek. It was in what is now Yadkin County, a mile or two northof the dividing line between Yadkin and Davie Counties. This wassurely where the Sparkses crossed the Yadkin in 1754 to seek theirhomesteads and where they doubtless obtained information regarding theregion further south where the South Yadkin joins the Yadkin (or NorthYadkin) River.

"It was a common practice for a settler on the Earl of Granville'sland to choose a site and to live upon it as a "squatter" for a numberof years before purchasing it. One ran the risk, of course, thatGranville's agent might sell the tract to someone else, but apparentlyit was a risk worth taking to make certain that a wise selection hadbeen made. It also gave one time to save the necessary shillings tomake the purchase.

"Matthew Sparks, whom we have identified as William Sample Sparks'ssecond son, chose a tract of land consisting of 372 acres at the verytip of what is now Davie County, where the South Yadkin flows into theYadkin River (or North Yadkin). It was not until April 4, 1761,however, that he obtained a deed from Lord Granville's agent for thisland--it had been surveyed the previous year. (Rowan County Deed Book4, p. 514) Matthew paid GranviRe's agent 10 shillings sterling for histract. We know also from the early land records of Rowan County thatMatthew Sparks built what became known as "Spark's Fish Dam" on theYadkin, which was a rather complex structure for catching fish whichhe probably shared with his neighbors.

"Also in 1761 (December 21), David Bailey (or Bayley) obtained a deedto a tract of 235 acres along the Yadkin River about three miles abovethat of Matthew Sparks. He may well have accompanied the Sparkses tothe Forks of the Yadkin since he had been a close neighbor of theirsin Frederick County, Maryland. In fact, David Bailey's "plantation"had been mentioned in the survey for a new road that had been made byMatthew Sparks for Dr. Carroll in Frederick County in 1752. (It isinteresting to note that Matthew Sparks later named a son "BaileySparks"--was his name chosen to honor David Bailey?)

"Solomon Sparks, son of Joseph and first cousin of William SampleSparks, settled on land which also adjoined the Yadkin River, about 12miles (as the crow flies) north of Matthew Sparks's tract. On April2, 1761, he obtained his deed for this tract (250 acres) fromGranville's agent for 10 shillings in sterling. 6' (Rowan County DeedBook 4, p. 389.) Then, on August 28, 1762, Solomon purchased (also for10 shillings) 290 additional acres adjoining his first tract. (RowanCounty Deed Book 5, p. 228.) [A map showing the location of Matthew'sand Solomons lands appears in William's scrapbook.]

"As was noted earlier, William Sample Sparks seems never to have ownedany land in either Queen Annes County or in Frederick County,Maryland, and, likewise, he acquired none in Rowan County. From alater Rowan County record, however, we know that he had a "dwellinghouse" in which he maintained an ordinary. Perhaps he built a home onthe land owned by his son, Matthew Sparks.

"James Sparks, Matthew's brother, was too young to acquire land whenthe family arrived at the Forks of the Yadkin, as was probably alsotrue of Solomon's brothers, Jonas and Jonathan. In all likelihood,James Sparks lived with his parents for a number of years, perhaps onthe land owned by Matthew Sparks, while Jonas and Jonathan probablylived with their brother, Solomon, for several years beforeestablishing homes of their own.

"Records were sparsely kept in Rowan County during its early years,and, until settlers actually purchased land, the chances were slightthat their names would be recorded in any county or colonial record.Many years would pass before there were organized churches wheremarriages, births, and deaths might be recorded. The earliest recordwe have found pertaining to a Sparks in Rowan County is dated June1756 when the justices of the Salisbury District Superior Court weresitting. Peter Arrand (or Aaron), who was a Rowan County settler asearly as 1753, was accused of a "Felony that is to say Buggery [i.e.sodomy]." Among the witnesses was James Sparks. Another witness wasEdward Hughes whom we have mentioned earlier. A jury found Arrand"Not guilty. (For the early minutes of this court, see a transcriptbegun in Vol. I, No. 1, February 1986, of the Rowan County Register.)

"Although our earliest reference to "William Sample Sparks" in RowanCounty is dated January 1762, we have no doubt that the "Will Sparks"who was a member of a jury on January 22, 1757, was actually WilliamSample Sparks. Since there was no other William Sparks in RowanCounty at that time, and because the clerk keeping a record of thecourt's proceedings made the entries as brief as possible, there wasno reason for him to use any fuller name than this. (See Abstracts ofthe Minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions, Rowan Counfy-,North Carolina, 1753-1762, by Jo White Linn, 1977, p. 70.) Thisparticular jury trial involved an unspecified charge against AndrewPitts. The 12-man jury of which William Sample Sparks was a member,found the defendant innocent. William Sample Sparks again served on ajury for the same court on July 23, 1757. In the minutes for thiscase, his name was recorded as "Wm Sparks." This case was brought byJoseph Harrison against James Berry for a debt; again, the jury foundfor the defendant. (see p. 77) Matthew and Solomon Sparks did notbegin serving on juries until 1761, the year in which they purchasedtheir land from the Earl of Granville.

"In January 1762, William Sample Sparks requested the Court of Pleasand Quarter Sessions for Rowan County to grant him a "Licence to keepOrdinary." Since this request involved his presenting a formal,written petition, it is not surprising that his full name shouldappear. The request itself was not recorded, but the following entrywas made in the court's minutes for January 19, 1762: "Ordered thatMr. William Sample Sparkes have Licence to keep Ordinary." Thejustices who granted the license were William Giles (who owned fourtracts of land in the Forks of the Yadkin not far from MatthewSparks's land), Edward Hughes, and John Frohock, both of whom havebeen mentioned earlier. An three judges doubtless knew William SampleSparks personally, and the fact that they referred to him as "Mr." issignificant. "Mr. 11 was then a title used only for men of highstanding in their community, who had established themselves asgentlemen of integrity. While obviously a tradesman, inn-keeper to beexact, rather than a land owner and farmer, William Sample Sparks hadachieved a rather high degree of status in Rowan County. (Bottom SQpg 3496)

{These notes are concluded in the notes for James, son of WilliamSample Sparks and Mary Courman.}

For marriage record source see SQ p. 4183.